Super Letter Game

Hello my name is Lisapizzza and I am addicted to Super Letter Game. Go ahead and google it if you want to risk getting addicted yourself.

The object of Super Letter Game is to click on all the letters of the alphabet, but be careful not to click on the multitudinous letter 'z' more than once, as that will end the game. That's pronounced "zed" here in Canada and the rest of the world. Did you Americans make it "zee" just so it would rhyme when you sang the alphabet song? Just curious. But I digress. The letters move away from the cursor when you move your mouse so it's not so easy to just click on them. You have to kind of fish them towards you.

There are two top ten leaderboards for those who manage to click on the entire alphabet. One board is for the top ten fastest scores. The other board is for the top ten people who have played the most games. I couldn't get into the fastest times, but I did make it into the most played. Quantity over quality. To date I have played 336 games. I want to make it to number one, but that position is occupied by "337LEE NYC USA !!!" This person has played 1004 games. At 2.5 minutes per game, that represents almost 42 hours of their life clicking an the abcd's. Yikes!

Even though I'm only in the quantity over quality board, I can brag that I have at least completed the game faster than anybody else in the quantity over quality board. My fastest time is 1:04:68 minutes. Even "337LEE NYC USA !!!", with all his or her practice of over a thousand games, has only a fastest time of 1:09:90 minutes. Ha. So there!

Customer "Care"

Ahhh how I love being "cared" for by the Customer Care Department of BigCorpCreditCo, et al. When I am forced to contact somebody at Customer Care, who is inevitably in a call centre on the other side of the planet, which is staffed by people with incomprehensible accents, speaking through phone lines both fuzzy and clicky, and who are paid a fraction of the wage that BigCorpCreditCo would have to pay if they were to set up this call centre in their own country.... why then my heart just bursts with pride at the thought that I am a part of BigCorpCreditCo's machine! Loved for and cared for! Just like my mama used to care for me. Oh wait, my mom was a cold fish who thought regular meals were a fine subsitute for love and affection. I see a paralell here.

Happy for now

Last week a motorist tried to run me off the road, and since I protested, he slowed down and tried a few more homicidal tricks to teach me to shut my mouth. I was so mad that I was completely unable to vent in this space. I took sleeping pills to get to sleep that night. The next day I was all wacked out from the pills and still stewing over that motorist. If I got any madder or obsessed with running it through my mind, I would have lost my mind.

Having reached the nadir of anger, there was only one way to go -- towards the zenith of happiness. Funny thing. I've felt pretty darn chipper this last week. I couldn't concentrate on being mad because being mad made me too mad. It's fine to be a little mad and rant about the annoying things in life. But when something really anger-inducing happens, if you let yourself get really angry then you're doomed.

I'm happy for now. And hey, my husband even started turning the wee one's clothes right way out before chucking them in the laundry basket. Life is good!

I'm Bored!

Previously I extolled the virtures of boredom. Oh, said I, how pleasant to sit and stare at the walls and have nothing to do.

So here I sit, staring at the walls, with nothing to do, and oh god am I bored! I am going to die of bordeom if something doesn't drop into my inbox soon. Oh yes, did I mention? I am at work. I would love to work, if only I had something to do. To make matters worse, my entire department seems to be missing today, except for me, and I have nobody to gossip with. Nobody to send dumb joke-mail to. Nobody to have lunch with. One co-worker called in sick because she has to study for a night-class. Two other people were here earlier, but have now independently and mysteriously disappeared. Others have just not shown up at all today, I don't know why.

What kind of crazy office is this?? What am I here for? I give the appearance of working, but in fact my efforts at this place are simply to surf the internet for 8 hours or so and write long emails to friends who live in other cities. When I feel like doing something moderately work-related I will delete unimportant emails from my sent folder, and delete the deleted items from the deleted folder. There's something enjoyable about possibly causing myself serious problems down the line by deleting some email that may have been important. Hah. But I can't do that just yet because I am bored and I refuse to do anything fun.

It's the halfway point of the day, and the thought of another 3 and a half hours to spend in this manner is too much. The long empty afternoon looms like a giant axe of boredom over my head.

I think I could be safely down-sized.

The Cure for Boredom

From time to time every kid falls prey to boredom. Boredom is a kid's version of depression. They claim to have nothing to do, act like it's all their mom's fault, and nothing that mom suggests is at all interesting. They just sit there, wilfully bored, complaining of boredom and getting irate about it.

I know the cure for boredom: Have a kid.

Thanks to being a parent, I now have almost no free time. When a tiny window of free time opens up for me, I'm happy to sit and stare at the walls. AHHHH lovely lovely boredom. Bring it on.

Old People Are Annoying

Who's first to get on the plane? Old people! Who's supposed to wait until everybody else gets off so that they can be assisted in deplaning? Old people! But who's up in the aisle blocking everybody's way as they try to get off first? Old people!

They've got nowhere to go, so you better get out of their way because they're going right over top you if you don't move. And they're in no hurry, so you better let them go first.

Old people annoy me so much, that when I get old I plan on having an incredible sense of self-entitlement as my reward for a lifetime of putting up with old people.

Folding the Kid's Clothes Could Be Easier

Okay! My husband gets our 4 year old daughter into her jammies at night, and removes her clothes by pulling them off and inside out. I do her laundry and spend too much time turning these clothes back the right way out. And this pisses me off.

Here's the laundry plan in our house: our 10 year old son does his own laundry. My husband does his own laundry. I do my own laundry, plus the 4yr old's, plus all the sheet, plus all the teatowels, plus anything else in the house that is fabricy, of which there is plenty. But that's fine by me, because a few years ago, before I saw the light and got everybody to do their own laundry, I was inundated with it, and spent a big chunk of every day doing bloody laundry. I highly encouraged everyone to rewear their pants and anything else that wasn't too smelly but there were still piles and piles all the time. Now, I do laundry once a week, about 3 or 4 loads.

Everything is peachy except for the huge quantities of little girl clothes that I have to turn and fold every week. Man she makes a lot of laundry. One small hamper contains at least three thousand articles of her little clothing. The girl can't dress herself if the clothes are inside out, so turning them the right way is necessary to getting up and at 'em every morning.

Now, it takes 4 seconds to fold something that's turned the right way. And 11 seconds to fold something that needs turning. Multiply that by three thousand bits of clothing, and we're talking a helluva lot of my life gets spent turning these sodding tiny pieces of clothing the right way out. My husband is incapable of retaining the memory of my asking him to turn things right way out at bedtime. The only thing I can do to make him remember is to make him do her laundry. Heh heh heh. I shall secretly enjoy this.

Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!

My! we Canadians are an apologetic lot. Sorry about that, you Americans. We're just nicer than y'all. Our mamas brung us up right.

Example #1: I was out there today on my bike. I was riding on the sidewalk to get to my house, and came up behind somebody who was obliviously in the way. I said "excuse me". And that innocent pedestrian said... "Sorry!"

Example #2: Later I was at the post office to pick up a giant box my mother had mailed to me for my daughter's birthday. I had my bike parked against a pole. Somebody else had their bike parked against that pole. I stuck the huge box over the baby seat. Just then the owner of the other bike came out of the post office. He went to unlock his bike, and in so doing, tipped my bike over. So I said... "Sorry!"

I counted today. I got five sorries and gave out three. Here's the funny thing. The apology is as likely to come from the person in the wrong as the person in the right. Wow, how utterly civilized we all are up here in Canada.

The Ramblings of a Discontented Office Drone

I really really want to escape my present job but I don't try all that hard. The few resumes I send out there just disappear into the ether. My resume is pathetic, with one real job in my lifetime (I'm not counting the McJobs), and no real education beyond a worthless diploma in Ceramics from a fourth rate college, which doesn't even offer the Ceramics course anymore. Moving on to some bigger and better occupation doesn't seem entirely possible given all that. I fancy working for some small, cozy, non-profit org, doing their books and managing their member database. That's my dream... sigh....

Okay well as long as I have to work it's what I would be somewhat satisfied to do, for a while. My real goal in life is to win the lottery and be done with work forever. I would get a pottery studio in some warehouse somewhere, with other artists in neighbouring studios for company. I would get a big cozy armchair to sit in and avoid potting in. I would make useless, non-functional pieces of pottery. No dishes. I would putter in my pottery studio. I might read books and drink cappucino in my armchair, with nary a worry about insomnia since getting up to go to work would be a thing of the past. I used to have a studio in a warehouse, shared with a few others. In fact I have had three different studios at various times. That was back in the day when I was mostly unemployed yet somehow getting by. Bloody kids are such a responsibility, demanding regular feedings and requiring me to work at a real job to support them. I wonder how I managed to get by without regular jobs, back when. It's not like I was dealing pot or selling my body on the street. What a mystery.

Mental Flossing

I just flossed my teeth. Whoo! Pat on back! Now what the hell is wrong with the rest of you? Like 99.9% of the rest of the population (or maybe I'm overestimating how many people actually floss) I didn't floss my teeth except occasionally in a pre-dentist panic, until my 30s. The only reason I started flossing at all was because I was dating (dating -- ha! actually merely having sex with) a man who was a hygiene freak. He showered several times a day, changed his clothes at least twice a day and brushed frequently with determination. And flossed, of course. He insisted that I should floss my teeth too. He would not kiss me unless I had brushed AND flossed. Since I really wanted to get into bed with him, (reasons for wanting that must have been purely pheremonal. He had a small penis and was not so good in the sack), I would oblige. (Side note -- we only ever had drunk sex because he was too uptight to share germs when sober). (Side note #2 -- he was an alcoholic).

The great change in my attitude towards flossing, from sexual duty to personal responsibility, occurred when visiting the dentist for a cleaning during those five and a half months of my dalliance with the germaphobe. The dentist x-rayed my teeth. I had no cavities. I was leaving the office, on my way out the door, when the dentist came out to the reception area and called me back to show me my x rays. He pointed out the area between the teeth. He said normally that area is dark which indicates deteriorating enamel. But the areas between the teeth on MY x ray wher NOT dark. Quite light in fact! Due to flossing, said the dentist. Something he rarely saw, said he. WOW! I felt like I had been given a gold medal. Never in my history of visits to the dentsit had I ever been praised for my dental hygiene. This was about the best feeling in the world.

And now I floss regularly. And so should you! (Side note #3 -- my mother-in-law has terrible gum disease and has lost many teeth to it. I asked her if she flossed. No, she said, do you think I should? I politely refrained from saying DUH!)

Monday's Retirement Plans

Every two months I round up at least three garbage bags of stuff and give it to the Canadian Diabetes Association when they call for donations. I don't know where the stuff comes from. We don't seem to buy bags of possessions that aren't edible, yet every couple of months there is junk to give away. And still we're drowning in it. I'm tired of picking stuff up off the floor. When I retire I am getting rid of all our possessions and buying an RV. I will spend my life in warm climates -- assuming there is still gasoline for personal use vehicles in the year 2030. And also assuming my husband is good with these plans. And also assuming there is still winter anywhere and the need for going south still exists. Should global warming bring year-round summer to Canada, then we're moving into a tent. We'll own two sets of clothes. Who cares what you look like when you're old, right? Cooking will be easy, with just two pots and limited options on the campfire. Dessert will be toasted marshmallows or nothing. Life will be grand.